Feral Blood

by Siara Brandt

  The kid should have had his backside blistered a long time ago, Linwood thought. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not while his mother kept making excuses for him. Excuses that only encouraged his bad behavior.

  “We haven’t eaten all day,” Mirin explained for her son. “Not since breakfast.”

  Linwood had been trying his best to ignore them all. He had also been trying to get in touch with Lise to see if Uncle Alford had shown up back at the funeral home. But he still couldn’t get any reception, nothing that lasted at any rate. Nobody else’s phones were working, either. There had been no signs of life at his uncle’s house, no lights. No sounds. Nothing. He lived in the country in the middle of nowhere. Eventually they met up with Uncle Alf’s immediate family and because they had hit a dead end there, and with another carful of searchers, they headed back to town to see if they could find out something, anything that would put an end to this whole nightmare. Hopefully, the police were on top of things by now, but Linwood wasn’t going to bet on that.

  Floris didn’t help matters by offering nonstop suggestions about where they should stop and get something to eat. She, too, just encouraged Bayley’s bad attitude. She kept naming places she had seen on the main road. Tacos? That sounded good. No. Bayley didn’t want that. Fish? That was out of the question. Bayley didn’t eat fish. There had been a bar on Main Street that had advertised the best cheeseburgers in town, but Linwood didn’t think that would be the right environment. Of course, when Linwood objected to the bar food, Bayley decided he wanted a cheeseburger. Still, Linwood did his best to get everyone to be reasonable, which was not an easy job, not by any means.

  “We’ll find somewhere else to eat,” Linwood said, trying to maintain some kind of control. Someone had to do it.

  “I wanted pizza,” Linwood heard Bayley say sullenly behind him right before there was yet another thump against the back of his seat. An extra hard one this time.

  “There are times in your life when you’re going to be disappointed,” Linwood told him through clenched teeth.

  Not Bayley. Not usually. He was used to having his every whim catered to. Or there would be hell to pay. And that’s just what this was beginning to feel like. Hell.

  Behind him, Linwood heard Mirin say under her breath. “Quiet, Bayles.”

  If it wasn’t going to be cheeseburgers, then it was going to have to be pizza. There was a gas station by the hotel that had advertised the best pizza in the county. They could try there. It was clear across town, but that might be the best option. They might even be able to have the food delivered to their room where they could regroup and come up with a plan about what to do about their missing uncle.

  It was definitely decided. Pizza. Linwood himself was getting hungry for pizza because that’s all everyone had talked about all the way to his uncle’s house and on the drive back to town. Aside from what had happened at the funeral home, of course. Linwood wished he could talk to Lise who must still be waiting there. But there was nothing he could do about that. Going by the funeral home would be going out of their way. It would take them clear across town. He didn’t think he could tolerate being trapped in the car with his argumentative relatives a minute longer than was absolutely necessary. With the phones not working, Lise was on her own.

  The arguing had resumed. Linwood was only able to tune it out partially. By now, Bayley was definitely getting on his last nerve. Right now he was complaining to his mother about how his iphone wasn’t working.

  Erna, apparently finally caving under the pressure she’d been under all day, yelled, “Bayley, shut the hell up.”

  Dead silence followed her outburst. A shocked silence. No one dared say a word. No one could remember the last time they had heard her use a swear word. Oh, sure, when they were little, one would slip out now and then, but not in a very long time. And not with such vehemence. Linwood realized the pressure must be getting to her, but look what she had been through. It couldn’t be easy mourning a brother who wasn’t really dead.

  In the backseat, silence continued to reign, which made Linwood decide that Mirin must be too angry to utter a word. As the silence just kept going on and on, Linwood had to work hard to keep a smile from showing. He saw signs in the rearview mirror that Vonley, his brother-in-law, was busy trying to comfort both Bayley and Mirin, for all the good that it was doing.

  The silence dragged on a little longer before Mirin asked stiffly, “Linwood, could you turn the light on? Bayles dropped his iphone.”

  The light went on, and stayed on while Bayley searched for his iphone.

  Floris began her own complaining. “Turn the light off, Linwood. I can’t see anything outside.”

  What was there to see outside? Linwood wondered. And then suddenly he jammed on the brakes, causing the carload of people to jerk violently forward at the same time.

  “Geeze, know how to drive?” Bayley complained from the backseat.

  But Linwood barely heard him. He just sat there staring out into the darkness, after he remembered to turn the light off. If there was something wrong or if he had finally had it with all the arguing, no one could really tell.

  “Did you see that?” Linwood finally got out, glancing briefly in his mother’s direction to see if she had seen the same thing that he had seen, whatever it was.

  “See what?” she asked.

  “I thought I saw- ”

  He never finished because Floris cut him off. “I don’t see anyth- ”

  Linwood cut her off immediately. “Shh!”

  Erna turned and stared silently at her son’s expression, noting the way his hands were tightly clutching the steering wheel. He was still peering into the darkness all around them with an intensity that made her look, too. But she couldn’t see anything because just then the lights up and down the entire street went out.

  “I thought- ” Linwood began again but he never got a chance to finish. And it didn’t matter because the other people in the car finally saw what he thought he had seen as it slammed hard into the side of the car. After that, there was only a chorus of screaming as they crushed against each other trying to get as far away from the windows as possible on that side of the car.

  Chapter 9

  He had hoped for a while, what had seemed like a very long while, that help was coming, but he knew now that no one was coming. They were on their own.

  He had seen enough to know how bad things were before they had secluded themselves here. He also knew things could only have gotten worse. Much worse. He also knew, belatedly, that he should have listened to Lise. Maybe he could have made a difference when it mattered. But now-

  Now it was too late.

  Kellan Laird sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands as he let himself feel his despair, really feel it, for several long devastating moments. He didn’t want to leave her but eventually he was going to have to do just that. They were going to run out of food soon. The water situation was even more critical. Not that Luce was able to keep anything down. But he, at least, had to keep up his strength if he was going to be able to take care of her.

  There was nowhere to take her for help. The hospital was barricaded. They had stopped letting anyone in a long time ago. What or who was inside Kel had no idea. There was no one – absolutely no one – to call for help. And even if there had been, the phones had stopped working, which meant that even if a cure was discovered somewhere in the world for whatever this was, no one would hear about it. So he did what he could, which didn’t amount to much, and tried not to think too much about how he had never felt so scared and so helpless in his life.

  It had begun almost a week ago with a slight fever. That had quickly progressed to the usual symptoms of a normal flu, nausea, headaches and weakness. Things had gone downhill fast after that. Kel knew within days that his wife was a very sick woman. There was no doubt that whatever was going on in the rest of the world had somehow found its way into their home.

  He got to his feet and stared in the
direction of the open bedroom door. He didn’t want to wake her, not if she was sleeping soundly. In the past twenty four hours she seemed to be resting more easily. In fact, she hadn’t even woken up the last time he had gone into the room.

  But he needed to go check on her. He was so worn out himself from lack of sleep that if he even laid down on the couch, he was afraid he would pass out from exhaustion and not wake up for hours. If that happened-

  He stood in the doorway without entering the room. Luce muttered something in her sleep but didn’t wake up.

  It was always in his mind. If she turned into one of those things, then what?

  The sickly grayish cast to her skin, he had seen that before. He couldn’t get the terrifying images out of his mind. Of bloodied corpses, what was left of them, mutilated beyond all hope of recognition, left in the streets. Forgotten. Unburied. And there were the others, the ones who had done the mutilating. The walking dead some people were calling them. Others called them the undead. Or zombies. Kel didn’t know what they were. He just knew that they were dangerous and that they seemed to outnumber the living.

  There seemed to be more of them every day. They staggered down the streets, wandered the yards, the sidewalks and the driveways. Once, he had woken to a bloody stain, a big one, in the middle of the sidewalk of the house next door. He didn’t know how the bloodstain had gotten there, or whose blood it was. He had seen the undead attack and kill people more times than he wanted to count. It had taken everyone a while to realize just how dangerous they were, and by then it was too late for a lot of people. But it wasn’t something you could wrap your mind around right away, not until you watched them kill and then devour the flesh of their victims right before your horrified eyes. Victims who might be your friends or your neighbors. Or your family members.

  You took your chances every time you went outside, but people had no choice as they ran out of food and water. And soon he would be forced to do the same thing. As was the case with any kind of disaster, the stores had been cleaned out right away. Frightened, desperate people hoarded everything they could as survival of their own families became their priority. And they worried, worried about what they would do when the food and the water did run out. Which meant their days and their nights were consumed with worry. Desperate people did desperate things, unspeakable things sometimes, but they didn’t always have choices.

  The days were bad enough, but Kel was afraid to lay down at night, afraid something would happen while he was asleep. So he had been staying up all night during the long dark hours and then he would nod off several times during the day. As a result he was as haggard on the inside as he looked on the outside. Unshaven, unkempt, unbathed, he couldn’t believe what he looked like every time he passed a mirror. It was like looking at a stranger.

  He had been forced to drain the water heater to keep them going. When things got desperate enough, the toilets would be next. They still had a small supply of canned goods and luckily a manual can opener, but they were eating everything cold. He was eating, at least. Luce wasn’t touching her food.

  After the food was gone? He tried not to think that far, but he had no doubt that this was a global disaster, which meant no place was safe. There was no way to get reliable news of any kind anymore, except word of mouth. There was no power at all, which meant no TV. No internet. No newspapers. It was a total blackout not only of the grid, but of information. The world had been plunged into the dark ages overnight and that darkness could be a terrifying thing, Kel had found. How many nights had he sat up listening to sounds outside the house, wondering if there was something out there trying to get in?

  Through it all he couldn’t help thinking about the shots. Who had gotten a vaccine and who hadn’t. Who had gotten sick, and who hadn’t. Of course he couldn’t be sure who had received a shot in every case, but he knew that his neighbor Steve, along with the rest of his family, had gotten their shots. The whole family had turned. They were out there right now roaming around with the rest of the undead.

  Kel himself hadn’t gotten around to getting his shot. He had intended to, but with everything going on, he’d kept putting it off. Not Luce. She’d made sure to get hers.

  Were the shots responsible for all this, as some people had begun to suspect? If Lise was here, he could ask her. She had researched the hell out of the subject. But there was no way of reaching her, no way of knowing if she was even alive or not. He wished he hadn’t caved under pressure to suppress certain stories, wished with everything in him that this was all a bad dream, one that he would wake up from soon.

  He never stopped hoping that Luce would pull through this, that she would be all right. But deep down, the reasonable, rational part of his brain told him he needed to prepare for the worst.

  Right now, as he stood in the doorway, he realized that his wife’s eyes had opened and that she was watching him. She must have correctly read the worried look on his face.

  She tried to reassure him. “I had my shot. I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t tell her how that made him feel even worse. He hadn’t voiced his suspicions to her.

  “What day is it?” she asked.

  “Friday.”

  Those kinds of things had no meaning for Kel anymore, but Luce held onto them.

  “Are you feeling any better?” he asked her.

  “I’m a little cold. The fever, I guess. Maybe you could put another blanket on me?”

  As he adjusted the blanket, she asked about another thing that didn’t matter anymore. “Did you take the trash out last night?” No one was picking up the trash, but he didn’t tell her that. She didn’t know how bad things were out there and he wasn’t about to tell her. He had shielded her from the worst of it whenever he could. Maybe she suspected the truth, but that wasn’t the same as actually knowing. He had taken care of her for the past eighteen years. He would continue to do so.

  “I took care of it,” he said as he looked down at her, alarmed suddenly at how changed she looked as the light grew outside the window.

  He remembered how she had told him that it felt like every cell in her body was dying one by one, that she had strange thoughts in her head when the fever was at its worst.

  Right now, thankfully, it didn’t seem like she was suffering from any of that. She smiled up at him and said she loved him. He had to swallow hard to keep the emotion from rising in his throat and hoped she hadn’t noticed.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Do you wish we’d have had kids?” she asked him out of nowhere.

  No. Not in this world.

  Luce couldn’t have kids, but it hadn’t stopped her from wanting them. Maybe that was a blessing, the way things were now. How much worse this would be if he had to watch his children suffer, too. Or, if he died, to know that they would be left all alone to try and survive in a world of the walking dead.

  They didn’t sleep together in the same bed anymore. Luce said it was too painful for her body to be touched, even accidentally, so she was more comfortable sleeping alone. But he knew she was lying. She didn’t want him to come close to her and get what she had.

  There were times when he wanted to say to hell with it all. He wanted to crawl into bed with her and lay beside her. He wanted to hold her close and comfort her and pretend that none of this was happening. But she wouldn’t let him. While physically she continued to grow weaker, in that she stayed strong.

  He might get sick anyway. There were no guarantees that he wouldn’t. But if he did, how could that be any worse than watching her die? She was fading away from and she was fading fast. And when she was gone, he didn’t know how he was going to bear it because if she was gone, part of him, the part that mattered, would die, too.

  When the clock struck ten that night, Kel checked on his wife again. In the light from a single candle, he could see right away that she was worse. Far worse. By morning, he was doing everything he could to keep himself together emotionally.

  When the sun started
lighting up the world outside the bedroom, he was shocked by the gray pallor of her skin and the gauntness of her features, the dark shadows beneath her eyes. When he looked into her eyes, however, the early light made her seem almost angelic. He couldn’t think of any other word to describe her. She was calm. Her voice was faint, but gentle still. It seemed to reverberate within the soul of him as she slowly lifted her gaze to meet his and said good morning.

  A sick roiling in his stomach gripped him with a new rush of despair. How was he going to survive if he lost her?

  “What day is it?” she wanted to know.

  “Saturday.”

  “Your birthday, isn’t that today?”

  Her confusion alarmed him anew. She had never missed his birthday. Ever.

  “No, it’s tomorrow,” he told her.

  “I’ll have to bake a cake.”

  He heard himself telling her, “We’ll do that. But not today.”

  “Yes, I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “They’re not human anymore.”

  Those had been Noby’s exact words.

  If they weren’t human, then what were they? Hezzie still didn’t have an answer and it tortured her, not knowing. It had made her put off saying goodbye to her parents until she knew how dangerous they were, until she realized there was nothing left of who they had been. And yet that final goodbye had been heart-wrenching, almost more than she could bear. For a while she had been immersed in grief so deep and so devastating that she almost lost her own will to live.

  Except for Noby, who gave her a reason to go on. He wouldn’t let her give up. Besides, if something happened to her, Noby would be all alone.

  At least Hezzie knew what had happened to her parents. Noby didn’t even know where his mother was. And though the world might be falling apart, at least they had each other. That was more than a lot of people had.

  While Hezzie mourned the loss of her parents, mourned the loss of the past and everything she had ever known, Noby dealt with his own grief by concentrating on how to keep them alive, which was not an easy thing for the living in a zombie apocalypse. But Noby was a survivor. He always had been. He had lost his mother at the age of three. Apparently she had decided that motherhood wasn’t for her and so she had left her husband and three-year-old son behind to start a new life in Colorado. Noby had never heard from her again.